George Little: You eat what you catch

Thursday

Jul 14, 2011 at 12:01 AMJul 14, 2011 at 2:16 PM

A 10-year-old fisherman in Florida recently hooked and was able to drag home a live alligator that was 6 feet long. The boy sustained only minor cuts and scratches in his struggle to get his prize catch home.

George Little

Mom could cook up a storm twice a day, every day, and with two kinds of pie for dessert. She could turn any game, fish or fowl, into a feast. A big bowl of pan gravy canceled out any “gamey” taste.

She had only one rule for cooking our catch or harvest. It was set 5 feet deep in double-reinforced concrete: Bring it home cleaned, dressed, scaled or filleted and ready to be put in the skillet.

Cousin Lloyd and I cleaned a lot of game by firelight, knowing the payoff was worth the inconvenience. Besides, there was no alternative.

Surprise catch

A 10-year-old fisherman in Florida recently hooked and was able to drag home a live alligator that was 6 feet long. The boy sustained only minor cuts and scratches in his struggle to get his prize catch home.

When Grandpa saw his grandson’s reptile stretched out in the yard, he called Florida Fish and Game. Before returning it to the wild, the officers made it clear if the boy were older, he would have been charged with a felony for being in possession of a live gator.

The kid said he hopes he never sees another alligator. If he’d been fishing for my mom’s table, he’d have reached that conclusion long before he ever got it home.

Beaver tales

In Fort Smith, located in Canada’s Northwest Territory, a beaver came strolling down Main Street, holding up traffic and slapping his tail defiantly at those who tried to approach him. He even picked a fight with a German shepherd. Unsure which creature was getting the worst of the encounter, the townspeople locked their pets indoors. After doing the town, the beaver waddled away to the nearby Slave River.

Apparently, no one in Fort Smith had the mountain man’s taste for beaver tail, or maybe no one knew how to cook one. If somebody could have gotten close enough to that beaver to skin it, Mom would have tried.

‘Kaboom’ fishing

An angler in Nebraska wasn’t having a lot of luck catching catfish or bluegill and was about to call it a day when something on the shoreline caught his eye. What he first thought to be a piece of plastic pipe turned out to be a waterlogged pipe bomb.

He put it in his cooler and headed for home, texting one of his fishing pals that he hadn’t caught any fish, but he was bringing home a bomb.

The speculation is that the bomb was a dud thrown in the water by a “fisherman” intent on harvesting a boatload of fish without baiting a hook. The man’s decision to take the bomb home, even though it had moss growing on it and snails attached to it, wasn’t the brightest. He was pointedly informed of such by the Omaha police bomb squad.

With six people in a one-bathroom house, Mom was an expert at diffusing bombs. Even so, she expected all of us to have sense enough not to bring one home.